Cherry Cooking Wood

Cherry is a popular cooking wood because of its sweet flavor and beautiful color. The smoke is mild and slightly fruity, which is why cherry wood for smoking shows up in backyard pits and restaurant smokers across the United States. Cherry wood splits burn clean and give off a steady smoke that leaves deep mahogany bark on pork, ribs, and poultry. Cherry firewood works in a fireplace or fire pit too, though most of our customers buy it as cherry BBQ wood for grilling and smoking.

ButlerWood cuts and ages its own cherry in Central Texas. All of our cooking wood comes out of our in-house land clearing work, so the wood gets used instead of dumped, and every split runs through the same aging and heat treatment. That is the difference between buying from a producer and buying from a reseller. Contact us today for shipping inside and outside of the United States.

What to Smoke with Cherry Wood

Cherry is a fruit wood, like apple, so the smoke flavor lands mild and sweet instead of sharp. That mild smoke is what makes it work on delicate meat that heavier wood would bury.

• Pork: shoulders, ribs, and loin. Cherry and brown sugar in a rub build the dark, glossy bark that competition cooks chase.
• Poultry: chicken and whole turkey. Cherry adds color and a light fruity flavor without turning the skin bitter.
• Beef: brisket and short ribs, usually run with oak wood underneath for backbone. A cherry and brown sugar glaze on short ribs sets up beautifully.
• Fish and cheese: cherry is one of the better woods for cold smoking because the sweet smoke stays soft at low temperatures.

Cooking with cherry wood is forgiving. Oversmoking with it is hard to do, which makes it an excellent choice for anyone still learning the smoking process on a new pit.

Cherry on Every Kind of Cooker

Our splits are cut for live fire. The 16-inch and 18-inch smoke wood sticks feed offset smokers and stick burners. The 8-inch splits fit a kettle grill, a drum, a charcoal grill, or a pizza oven where you need a shorter piece and a smaller fire.

On a charcoal grill, bury one or two natural cherry wood splits in the coals and let them catch before the meat goes on. On kettle grills, bank the coals to one side and set the smoke wood at the edge to get a consistent temperature instead of a hard blast of smoke. In a pizza oven, cherry burns hot and clean and leaves a light sweet note on the crust, which is why our pizza oven splits sell as fast as we cut them.

Gas grill owners can still get real wood smoke. Put a split in a foil pouch or a smoker box, close the lid, and run one burner low. A gas grill will never match an offset, but it will pick up honest smoke flavor.

Cherry Splits vs. Cherry Wood Chips, Chunks, and Pellets

Most people start with cherry wood chips, and chips have their place. Wood chips burn out in fifteen or twenty minutes, so cherry chips suit a quick grill session and not much else. Cherry wood chunks last longer, but on a long cook you still spend the day feeding the fire and interrupting the smoking process.

Splits are what restaurants run. One 16-inch smoke wood stick holds a consistent temperature far longer, and the fire stays cleaner because the wood is aged down to the right moisture content over months in the Texas sun. If you have been buying bags of wood chips and smoking chunks by the grocery store checkout, a single box of splits will outlast a whole season of them. We sell cherry as splits and cord pallets.

Pairing Cherry with Other Woods

Cherry works with almost everything, which is why pitmasters treat it as an accent rather than a base. Layer it over post oak on brisket, and you keep the clean oak base while picking up color. Blend cherry with hickory wood on pork ribs when you want the bacon note of hickory softened at the edges. Apple wood and cherry together give you a double fruit wood flavor profile that is hard to beat on poultry, and pecan sits between the two with a similar mild flavor. One split of mesquite in a cherry fire adds a bite to beef.

Order Cherry BBQ Wood from ButlerWood

We clear the land, cut the wood, age it, treat it, and haul it on our own trucks. That is why a box of cherry from us matches the pallet you ordered last season. Backyard cooks take the 1.5 cu. ft. box. Restaurants and pitmasters buy by the pallet and the truckload, and bulk and wholesale pricing improves with volume. Cherry moves fast once BBQ season hits, so order before the rack runs dry.

NOTE: 1/8 Cords will ship in 8x 2Cu.ft Boxes.

Shipping on 1/2 Cord pallets is free for certain states when you order 3 or more pallets! View Our Shipping Rates Here